Diamanda Galas does the Bolt

A month or so ago in Melbourne, I was minding by business and biding my time over a pint or two and reading the Herald Sun. Casually reading a column, I was momentarily dumbstruck by a paragraph of concentrated stupidity. Sure enough checking the byline, it was by Andrew Bolt.

Cut to today’s SMH and they have an interview with Diamanda Galas, a sometimes target of Bolt’s ignorance.

I’ve seen Diamanda twice and her heartily recommend seeing her. Her performances are confronting, overwhelming and worthwhile. Her last Aussie tour centered around a suite of songs titled Guilty, Guilty, Guilty. Johnny Cash, Ralph Stanley, OV Wright and others are covered. The performance was intense, revealing and not without a little humour.

And what does Ms Galas think of Bolt?

“That Bolt, he’s a real f—ing idiot, man, a real halfwit,” says Galas, in a cab from the zoo to an air-conditioned patch of her home turf in Manhattan’s East Village. “If you have questions, as you would in any operatic production, be it Tosca, be it Wagner, get the f—ing notes.” Galas called Bolt a masturbator at her next Melbourne show “in Greek, and half the audience laughed, even if that motherf—er expects everyone in Australia to only speak English”.

She knows the man well.